Chapman Center exhibit traces history of photography

Sunday

Jul 21, 2013 at 12:01 AM

You don't have to know much about photography to enjoy and appreciate “Plates To Pixels,” the Ben Nixon Photography Collection on display at Spartanburg Art Museum at the Chapman Cultural Center. The visual power you will feel from the blank eyes of a blind man will stop you in your tracks.

By STEVE WONGFor the Herald-Journal

You don't have to know much about photography to enjoy and appreciate “Plates To Pixels,” the Ben Nixon Photography Collection on display at Spartanburg Art Museum at the Chapman Cultural Center. The visual power you will feel from the blank eyes of a blind man will stop you in your tracks.If you take the time to understand that it is the photographic process — 8-by-10 view camera and printed in platinum — used to create this photo, “Blind Musician, Kashmir, India 1985,” the 58-photo exhibit will cause even the most pedestrian patron to linger a little longer in awe of the world's great masters of capturing the moment.Unlike most of today's digital photos, taken with a smartphone, manipulated with an app and sent to the Internet within minutes, the film processes used 100 years ago often took hours and used toxic chemicals to produce a single image.And, yes, a digital photo can to some extent simulate the warmth, depth and details captured by film, but even the most tech-savvy PhotoShop professional will admit images processed on glass plates or film and painstakingly developed in a darkroom with chemical baths have qualities that can never be fully imitated by a computer.As a whole, “Plates To Pixels” is one man's personal history of photography. Nixon, a native son of Sparkle City, is currently returning South from his extended apprenticeship in California.Now making his home in Asheville, N.C., Nixon headed west in 2002 as a young man to learn from the acclaimed photographer and teacher Jack Welpott in San Francisco. It was during those years when Nixon honed his skills as a fine-art photographer and began collecting the works of others whom he admired. Now 31, Nixon has a collection of prints by some of the most well-known and accomplished photographers throughout history and from around the world: Samuel Borne, Arthur Rothstein, Sally Mann and Ansel Adams, to name a few.Some of the work dates back to the 1860s, when photography was new and messy. The latest work in this collection is pegged at 2011 and is neatly digital. It is the older works and the older processes that attract Nixon, who personally prefers to use a gelatin silver process in the creation of his own art. Despite a few gaps in the timeline, this collection is a historical representation of how photography started and how it has continued through the years to become an accepted visual art form and medium.Most of the photos are portfolio size and require up-close consideration. Take, for example, “U.A. Walker Theatre, New York, 1978” by Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto. At first glance, it is easy to dismiss this odd image of a blank movie screen glowing in the middle of a dark but elegant cinema house. Here, the photographer set his large-format camera as far away from the movie screen as possible and opened the shutter for the entire duration of the movie, about one and a half hours. Using only the constantly changing light from the screen, the camera picked up the subtle details of the theatre's interior, creating a ghostly visual of Hollywood's myth of the American dream.There are several cases of photographers using highly unusual and creative techniques to get images that transcend the art of photography. Probably one of the oddest photos is “Sunburn” by Chris McCaw. The series of holes on the paper look suspiciously like cigarette burns spaced diagonally across the sky. The burn holes are real, and they were created by focusing on the sun and using its heat in a process called solarization.As part of this exhibit, Nixon will host several talks and workshops until it ends on Aug. 31. On Aug. 4, he will host “Urban Photography,” and participants will take photos of downtown Spartanburg at Nixon's direction. He will host a second public reception and talk on Aug. 15 during ArtWalk.

As an added bonus to the “Plates To Pixels” exhibit, Nixon and his brother, John, and their stepsister, Page Davis, will exhibit their own work starting Aug. 1. “Siblings” will consist of photographs by Ben, collages by John and paintings by Page.John, who also lives in Asheville, creates collages made of human anatomy drawings reconfigured to look like cross-sectional botanical drawings. For example, human bones and organs are rearranged to resemble orchids. Page's canvas work is colorful, loosely geometrical and nonrepresentational, creating a sense of organized chaos. In keeping with his favorite film process method, Ben's black-and-white photos of landscapes are surreal, otherworldly and yet strangely familiar.Their father, George Nixon, Spartanburg businessman and owner of Allegra printing, can be proud of his highly creative adult children, who have come together to create a diverse exhibit of family talent. The free reception for “Siblings” will be Aug. 1.“Plates To Pixels” is open for viewing 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and 1-5 p.m. Sundays.

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